Notes Along the Way -- God's Callings Part II

Last week I posted from some notes I've been making about my life. That post was about my strong sense that God wanted me to go to Central Wesleyan College, now Southern Wesleyan. Here is the second part of that chapter.
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5. Central was a great place for me to grow up a little. Don't get me wrong. I'm not sure I fully reached adulthood until my 50s. But I was another run of the mill immature male in 1984 who had a mother who helicoptered me long before it became the rage. 

To me, Central was FREEDOM! I could set my own schedule. I could order my life in my own time. And in a world before email, cell phones, and texting, I was pretty much on my own.

It was of course a small train wreck. Finals week of my first semester I tried to pull two all nighters in a row to get all my work done. The first was trying to finish reading through the rest of the Old Testament (in the King James) for Herb Dongell. I didn't succeed. 

The second night was in the chemistry lab. Central had graciously -- but unwisely -- given me 8 hours of introductory chemistry for a 3 on the AP test, my lowest score. I knew some chemistry, but I didn't know the full equivalent of a year's worth. So I started college in Inorganic Analytical Chemistry, and I didn't know what the heck I was doing.

Dr. Schmutz was the kindest of men -- I think a former Quaker turned Wesleyan. But expecting us to be responsible adults, our 10 labs were just due by the end of the semester -- a delightful, terrible test of discipline for me. I had five labs still to go coming into finals week.

If I had finished the science route, I would have made a much better theoretical physicist or chemist than an experimental one. I used to sit neurotically trying to balance the scale to weigh something. In weighing, I would take so long doubting my reading that I suspect some of my samples took on water. One of my results that week broke the law that matter cannot be created -- I ended up with more mass than I started.

AI could have helped fill in gaps if it had been around but, alas, I had no idea where to turn for what I didn't know.

6. There were three of us chemistry majors that semester -- something I tried to sell my high school chemistry teacher when I told him where I was going. "There are only three of us and I'll have my own keys to the chem lab and stock room," I told him, trying to be enthusiastic. He was very kind, but I know very disappointed.

Rodney Clark and Micah Travis were good friends. Still friends. Micah was really the only person at Central that I had known before coming to Central, a fellow Floridian. Micah and I had a delightful all-nighter working to finish our experiments. I used a magnetic stirrer to mix my instant tea in a beaker. We cooked mac and cheese with a Bensen burner and then served them on Petri dishes. Micah slept on Dr. Schmutz's office floor.

The next morning we had our last class of Calculus III (Central had given me 8 credits of Calculus for a 5 on the AP test). There were only three of us in there -- me, Micah, and Alan Payne. But I was exhausted. I woke up with everyone gone and the lights out in the room, face on the desk with mouth agape. Apparently, Dr. Mickey Rickman had said to just leave me there -- that I needed sleep more than whatever topic we were covering.

I had to phone the final lab results back to Dr. Schmutz over the phone -- incredibly gracious on his part. The numbers weren't right but there was nothing I could do about it. Someone had taken me to the Greenville airport and I had fallen asleep before the plane left the ground. It was the lowest grade of my college career, what was no doubt a very gracious B-.

7. The spirit was willing. The flesh was week. "I'll work on it tonight." "I'll get up early." "I'll work on it after lunch." In my later years we would say, "Let's get a late key and go do homework at Huddle House." But after eating, "I'm tired. Let's go back and work at the dorm."

I was never diagnosed, but I wonder if I was attention deficit. I could barely read a paragraph without my mind going somewhere else. It took every bit of will to force myself through reading even though I wanted ever so desperately to do it. Later on I would stand to read or read out loud.

Posture matters. In those days, sometimes I would lie in bed with a book on the floor trying to read -- disaster.

I was an idealist and a dreamer in those days. (I would become a pragmatist and a dreamer later on.) I had a 7:50am class in Art Appreciation with Dr. Barbara Bross. She was great, but I just couldn't stay awake. I always shook my head at IWU when Dr. Lennox would tell new students to sign up for a 7:50 class. "Don't set yourself up for failure," I would think to myself.

I slept in an inordinate number of college classes. In a Dr. Marling Elliott's class on the Poetic Books, I sat on the front row to try to stay awake. One day I made a comment and instantly fell asleep. Scott Key asked what I had said from the back, and they had to wake me up to answer.

Dr. Dongell was particularly harsh toward sleepers. But he was always gracious to me. I mostly stayed awake in his classes though. Sometimes in Dr. Ken Foutz's classes, I would line my head up with someone's head between me and the professor so I might at least have a chance of dozing with anonymity.

8. But the biggest event of my freshman year of college was another calling. You could argue that God used my personal struggles to push me in a different vocational direction. As the semester moved forward, I began more and more to feel like God was calling me into ministry. I'm glad to spiritualize it, but you can see the psychological factors in play too. I am philosophical by nature and, although I couldn't have told you at the time, I was deeply attracted to theology more than what ministers do most of the time. What higher study was there than the study of God?

Of course ministry is primarily about people and faciliating God's engagement with people and people's engagement with God. Rev. James Wiggins would be my primary mentor for ministry in those days, and he modeled visitation. I predictably liked preaching. He modeled concrete, down to earth care for people -- and especially their souls.

But, again, for someone whose primary mode was doubt -- even in front of a chemistry balance -- I had an uncanny sense of certainty and clarity at the end of that first semester. I told my parents when I got home. "I think God is calling me into ministry." 

My mother was not surprised and was delighted. I think my father was happy too, but he wisely advised that I continue my second semester in chemistry as planned. "Then if you still feel the same at the end of the semester, you can switch." 

It was a wise plan. Spring semester went much better -- spring always did. The darkness of fall and winter was always depressing for me at Central and later in Wilmore at Asbury. One of the happiest days of the year at Central was when the flowers at Clemson came into full bloom in the spring.

So I did my second semester of math and science -- Differential Equations, Organic Analytical Chemistry, Zoology, Physics II at Clemson. I loved it. Hoped I could still finish chemistry and math degrees too at that point. (I haven't totally given up -- I'm technically a chemistry major at Arizona State University at this moment.)

But I had complete confidence that God was calling me into ministry. It was the second time in my life that I had been absolutely confident about what I thought was God's will. The first was going to Central in the first place. Now the second was to become a minister.